How were they generous?
My pay for the first two years was less than that of an ECG technician, despite working longer and more unsocial hours. In terms of hospital doctors, the pay hasn't rocketted.
In respect to GPs, they stated how difficult and unmanageable it was for out-of-hours services. The Govt. stated the Primary Care Trusts would do the work and each GP would take a paycut of £6000. This was how much the Govt valued the OOH services. Only now have they realised how much it really costs to run a proper OOH service.
As for pay, as part of the new contract, the Govt decided that instead of giving GPs their full amount of money for the practices, they would pay each practice 50% and the rest they had to earn through targets. If you had your pay cut in half and then told you had to work harder to get the other half, you are gonna work hard enough to earn that remainder. In order to improve services, GPs were also offered more money for offering things like minor surgery, diabetes clinics, asthma clinics etc. You must remember GP practices are and have long been businesses. Each surgery gets a fixed amount depending on services and targets, out of which they pay for running costs such as staff, utilities, rent, insurance etc and the rest gets divided up between the partners. Some surgeries have done very well by being very clever. Others have suffered more as a result. Most GPs have taken a pay cut for the last three years since the rate of pay has increased less than inflation. Most GPs earn less than £100k pa. Hospital docs have the option of private work and also get paid extra for providing extra services too.
